The Lost Portraits consists of 4? Jacquard-woven digital portraits. Each portrait contains the image of the face of the deceased, their name, and their age at the time of death. Different curatorial and installation strategies are applied to this piece depending on the venue in which it is being exhibited, however there are some constants. The portraits are never framed or hung behind glass, each portrait is installed at the height of the deceased, and they are installed in order of age with two interruptions: Rebecca, 14 and Caroline, 16, were friends whose families requested they always be placed side by side, and James 16 and Harry 27, brothers, whose parents requested they be displayed side by side and with their portraits touching each other.

Art Works

The raw material for the physical artworks was materials belonging of the suicide deceased donated by the process by thier families. By investigating this tangible research, applying visual art methodologies and processes and listening to the contributing reflections and conversations, the materialising practice began to emerge in two stages. At the first stage (Ennistymon ’09), the donations and conversations with six families emerged as works in progress. At the second phase (Galway ’09), which built on the experience of Ennistymon ’09, the donations of 46 families emerged as works in a more advanced stage. ​​​

The works are as follows: Informed Consent, which consisted of the 107 signed Consent Forms, each containing the signature of a research participant; the entire physical contents of the Visual Arts Autopsy (VAA) archive were presented in 46 individual Archive Rooms; the works Lost Portrait Gallery and Lost Portrait Projections were presented as two separate pieces; the Lost Portrait Gallery consists of a round room, 5 meters in diameter housing 39 Jacquard portraits of the deceased. A video projection documenting the weaving process of the Jacquards is also presented as a work; the Databoxes work explores an interface between art and science; Worn Worlds is a photographic excavation of the objects, donated to the Lived Lives Archive, seeking signs of the lived life on the donated clothing. Worn Worlds is presented in two formats, photographic print and moving image; finally the Lived Lives Archive Print is a photographic topography of all the artefacts that were donated to the research.​

Informed Consent

The emergent art practice developed side by side with a scientific inquiry: all the research participants gave verbal and signed permission, following the principle of informed consent, which is a mandatory process for any scientific study involving human participants in SVUH/UCD. Informed Consent is a document-based work consisting of all the consent forms that the families had signed at the time of interview.

By signing this document the families “allow” the individual behind the clinical statistics to emerge. In one sense they are waiving their right and that of their deceased family member to confidentiality and anonymity, in another sense they are making a positive contribution to society. The most commonly stated motivation for participation in this process is to prevent other families going through what they went through. This is the essence of humanity. This work also acted as a vehicle to remind the participants of their personal decision to participate and emphasised the power of their personal signature. By publicly stating, “Yes my son, my daughter, my brother died by suicide”, the silence of stigma is challenged and they create the “warp” for the story to be woven. In "Galway ’09" this work consisted of 107 A4 size documents, installed in the main corridor on the ground floor More

Archive Rooms

The Archive Rooms were presented with two primary objectives. The first was to seek the families’ permission to use all the donated items in future works. In order to do so, all of the actual donations were utilised. These rooms will manifest in different forms and contexts, but will always be drawn from the donated objects. Secondly, these rooms were presented as a platform for family engagement and feedback as works in progress – they were not presented as “finished” pieces. Each deceased person was allocated the same space regardless of the volume of their donations and each room was viewed as a separate work. An audio extract from the narrative recorded at the initial interview played quietly in the background in each archive room. This audio element varied in length, ranging between three and seven minutes in duration.